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John P. Myers
02-07-13, 10:42 PM
Let the countdown to 2014 begin.

Earlier this week, Michael Larabel, founder of Phoronix, tweeted that he had heard Microsoft was looking into producing Office for Linux next year. Larabel expanded on that tweet in a blog post published on Phoronix this week. According to Larabel, the information comes from a source he spoke to during the Free Open-Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) this past weekend. This source told Larabel that Microsoft is taking a "meaningful look" at a full port of Office for Linux [in 2014]. The reason for Microsoft's increased interest in Linux is apparently due to Linux showing signs of commercial viability on the desktop.

Indeed, with Microsoft rumored to working on Office for Android, the idea of Office for Linux is pretty plausible (the Android OS is itself based on Linux).

Am i wrong, or is this a pretty important sign you're in trouble when you feel the need to do things like this?

zombie67
02-08-13, 12:36 AM
Am i wrong, or is this a pretty important sign you're in trouble when you feel the need to do things like this?

No, you're right. This is huge.


But I think the implementation is going to be key.


OpenOffice is already out there. And it's free. So if M$ wants to charge for their product, it can't be crippled in any way, and completely compatible with the windows version. And *that* means they give up on using Office as a tool to force people to windows...

Fire$torm
02-08-13, 12:47 AM
Am i wrong, or is this a pretty important sign you're in trouble when you feel the need to do things like this?

Well........ Yes?

Win8 has not been the failure Vista was, but neither has it been the success Win7 IS. I'm sure Redmond is aware of Linux's market penetration with Ubuntu spearheading the consumer sector. Where they are really stupid is believing they have even a snowball's chance in hell of any commercial success porting M$ Office to any free Open-Source platform. M$ has major competition from the likes of LibreOffice & OpenOffice, although the latter isn't well maintained. Both of these offerings work. Both import M$ proprietary file formats and both are FREE. And if you have paying attention, M$ is changing the licensing of Office to an annual fee. And if you have visited M$'s download center, you will have noticed they revamped it. Now every download listing includes its price! Obviously M$ intends to start charging for downloads at some point in the future. Sorry Redmond, I am not nearly that dependent on your bloatware to allow you to nickle and dime me into abject poverty..... EVER!

The other venue where Redmond has fallen woefully behind is Games on Linux. Games drove M$'s consumer market penetration dynamo beginning in the mid 80's. Apparently they have completely forgotten that lesson. Corporate arrogance maybe?

I still believe M$ will be nothing more then a memory in 5~10 years.... or so.

trigggl
02-08-13, 12:48 PM
An Outlook port might be interesting, but otherwise...(:|

John P. Myers
02-08-13, 04:31 PM
Win8 has not been the failure Vista was

True, but if you subtract all the Win8 installs from tablets and smartphones - where Vista and 7 have no presence - then how would you measure Win8's success? Changes things quite a bit i'd imagine.

Fire$torm
02-09-13, 01:16 AM
True, but if you subtract all the Win8 installs from tablets and smartphones - where Vista and 7 have no presence - then how would you measure Win8's success? Changes things quite a bit i'd imagine.

True. I'd be interested to know how many people bought a device with Win8 and then at some point deleted it in favor of something else like Ubuntu with Unity or Android.